A Military Coup In Egypt? We Can Think Of Worse

Egyptian army soldiers stand by the walls of the presidential palace with Arabic graffiti that reads ""eave, invalid, no for the Brotherhood," during... View Enlarged Image

The Egyptian army hints that it may step in if the new Islamist government can't keep order.

Idealists will cringe, but a coup may be the only way to put the country on track to real freedom.

There are some things the U.S. government can't say out loud — such as, "We'd like to see this elected government kicked out by the military."

But even Barack Obama may now be quietly hoping for a reboot, courtesy of the Egyptian army.

Obama's administration was so taken with the social-media theater of the Arab Spring that it ditched a flawed but reliable ally, Hosni Mubarak, and created a political vacuum that well-organized radical Islamists were ready to fill.

Usually, an American president who makes such a mistake (witness Jimmy Carter and the shah of Iran) doesn't get a second chance to do things right. Egypt may be different.

It has been two years since anti-Mubarak crowds started filling Cairo's Tahrir Square. The military relinquished power last year to the Islamist government of President Mohammed Morsi, who then stumbled badly on his jog to dictatorship.

Morsi first raised the ire of his badly organized opposition by trying to put himself beyond the power of Egypt's judiciary. Then the new constitution, drafted in a process dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, was put to a referendum that drew only 32% of the nation's voters.

It won a majority nationwide but lost in Cairo.

Now the country appears to be descending into chaos. Anti-government demonstrators are battling government security forces in Cairo and other big cities.

The death toll has reached at least 60, with hundreds injured. Looters on Tuesday sacked the luxury Semiramis InterContinental Hotel in Cairo — a grim sign for what's left of Egypt's tourist industry.

The upshot is that, whatever power Morsi has seized, it's not enough yet to keep the peace or to make him an effective dictator.

Enter Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Egypt's defense minister and head of the army.

In remarks posted Tuesday on the armed forces' Facebook page, al-Sisi warned of a potential "collapse of the state" due to "the continuation of this struggle between the different political forces."

It doesn't take much imagination to sense the warning here: Either civilian politicians create an effective government or someone else will have to do it for them.

Did he just threaten a coup? Maybe that or something more subtle — a tug on the leash pulling the civilian government back to a safer path.

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